`Likely voters in US favour Republican Congress`

Washington: Most likely voters in US
Elections to be held on Tuesday prefer a Republican-controlled Congress, an
opinion poll showed in a new indication that Republicans are
poised to make substantial gains.

The final NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey before
the elections showed that 49 per cent of likely voters prefer
a Republican-controlled Congress, versus 43 per cent who want
Democrats to remain in charge.

"The Democrats are about to feel the force of
hurricane winds," Democratic pollster Peter Hart, one of the
conductors of the survey, is quoted as saying.

Forty per cent of those polled said it would be a
"good thing" if Republicans controlled both the House of
Representatives and the Senate, compared with 34 per cent who
said it would be a "bad thing".

As many as 84 per cent of Americans were dissatisfied
with the state of the US economy, and 60 per cent believed the
country is headed in the wrong direction, the poll indicated.

A combined 63 per cent -- including 47 per cent of
Democrats -- said they wanted to see "a great deal of change"
or "quite a bit of change" in the way President Barack Obama
has been leading the country.

Obama`s job-approval rating stood at 45 per cent, a
two-point decline from the last poll.
Twenty-eight per cent of those surveyed identified
themselves as Tea Party supporters.

Among these supporters, 57 per cent would replace
every single member of Congress if they could, according to
the poll, which has detected the same sentiment among 45 per
cent of all registered voters.

The survey of 1,000 registered voters was taken
October 28-30 and had an overall margin of error of plus-minus
3.1 percentage points.